Breathe

It used to be the worst part of my day.

The part where my self-diagnosed inadequacies as a mother seeped through my confident veneer.

I cried. I prayed. I read books, blogs, you name it. We swayed heavily between different schools of thought: between closing the door and walking away without saying anything, and rocking him gently; singing sweet lullabies while telling him it was ok, that he was loved and wouldn’t be alone.

It felt like the days would never end. Because I knew that even when he did eventually fall asleep, he’d be wake again within four hours, needing someone, needing to be held.

The witching hour became longer in our house. From about 4pm I would count the hours until bedtime. This didn’t comfort me though, as a sense of anxiety arose within me. The fear of the anticipated anxiety I would feel as we tried to get him to sleep.

This couldn’t go on. We couldn’t go on. More specifically, I couldn’t go on, not if we were ever going to develop an independent sleeper and get a good night’s sleep ourselves.

Something happened.

Something incredible. I can’t pin point when or why, but all of a sudden I found myself longing to do bedtime. Before I would endlessly stir dinner to ‘busy myself,’ an excuse to avoid the dreaded bedtime. Now I love it. I genuinely look forward to this special time of day – not because he’ll be asleep soon, not even so that I get my husband to myself (although both seem decent reasons to me!) No, because it’s my favourite time of day. The time when we snuggle down on our floor cushion after he’s collected the necessary props – his dummy, a fleecy blanket, his milk and his Bible. You can see where this is going now!

We sit and we enjoy an amazing truth from this children’s Bible. We talk about our day, praying about it, and for the people we’ve seen or will see. For family in different countries. For ourselves.

We take a breath and let Jesus into our bedtime, into our sleepiness.

Our little one may only be 23 months old but he has a clear ‘Amen,’ and God is using this time to breathe into me. To let His whispers come from my breath and glide over this precious gift we call our son. My focus moved. It evolved from making sure that he slept on my schedule, to making the most of these precious fleeting moments. It went from counting the hours to a time without him awake, to counting the minutes until we would sit on that cushion, and breathe. … We still battle with sleep-time. Some days he still needs more help than others. But everything is survivable – when you allow yourself to breathe.

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Our little one is currently sleeping to anything by Kai Engel.

Everything A Child Should Know about God is written by Kenneth Taylor and goes through essential Bible truths with great illustrations and questions for older kids.

We also used White Noise app when he was younger, because it was better for the drought stricken country than leaving the shower running!